“Such an ambitious, large-scale overhaul of zoning rules is practically unheard of in U.S. cities, where single-family neighborhoods with their rows of houses set behind landscaped front yards have typically been off the table during discussions of citywide ‘Smart Growth’ and affordable housing,” reads the Los Angeles Times editorial board’s green-with-envy endorsement.

Other facets of the plan are drawing critical acclaim, too. The policy eliminates off-street minimum parking requirements, making Minneapolis the fourth city to make such a move. (San Francisco pulled the trigger earlier in December, while both Buffalo in New York and Hartford in Connecticut did so in 2017.) Reason hailed Minneapolis 2040 as a victory for free-market deregulation (even as it pooh-poohed an inclusionary zoning ordinance that encouraged developers to set aside units for low-income families).

By its end, 2018 turned out to be the year of the YIMBY. Not only did Minneapolis prove that a major American city could pass pro-housing zoning reforms beloved by Yes-In-My-Backyard types, it could pass them all at once, and without forcing the mayor to flee by cover of night. Indeed, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is taking a victory lap on the strength of a truly comprehensive plan—with features that address climate change and structural racism—although it might have cost him the support of some wealthy homeowners. But even this political liability is distributed, as all but one city council member joined together to pass the scheme.

Could this be the blueprint for a housing wave—a strategy that unites social justice warriors, type-A transit maximalists, and Howard Roark–ian libertarians?After the success of Minneapolis 2040, the better question might be, how could it not?

Oregon hopes to be the first state in the nation to test that assumption. As Willamette Week reports, State House Speaker Tina Kotek, the representative from Portland, is drafting a bill to end single-family zoning in any Oregon city with a population of 10,000 or more. The legislation would effectively upzone 47 different cities, from tiny Monmouth in Polk County to Eugene, Salem, and Portland. For years, liberal Portland has been unable to muster support for a policy that would enable fourplex housing developments anywhere in the city; if it’s that difficult to pass zoning reforms in one of the most progressive cities in the nation, it’s only going to be trickier when conservative Eastern Oregon has its say.

Sweeping bans on single-family zoning are unlikely anywhere. Even in Minneapolis, where threeplex housing will be allowed on single-family plots, the new dispensation does not grant room for buildings that are much larger in scale. Earlier this year, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson pitched a rules change as a strategy for combating NIMBYism. (But this is conservative slight-of-hand: Instead of tying federal housing funds to affirmative efforts to desegregate, Carson would pin them to deregulation.)

Two years out from the next election, affordable housing is already a subject of national debate. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a possible presidential hopeful in 2020, introduced a comprehensive bill called the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. Not to be outdone, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, another 2020 contender, put out a Housing, Opportunity, Mobility, and Equity Act. Respectively, these bills represent the carrot and the stick, as far as as federal approaches to housing go. Neither will get a moment’s consideration from the Republican-controlled Senate, but they signal that fair housing could be an issue in the 2020 election—at least in the Democratic Party primary.

New housing starts have sputtered over the recovery, compared to pre-recession levels. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

Instead, local leaders hit on successful ways for overcoming the value-action gap—a wonky term for the phenomenon seen when homeowners in progressive neighborhoods post yard signs welcoming all peoples even as they oppose nearby housing developments. Going forward, there are proven tactics for bridging the value-action gap and solving for the ABCs of social change—attitude, behavior, and choice. Minneapolis finally got the damned thing done, and others will follow.

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Finally, 2018 marked the Year of Our Lord when NIMBYism went from a seemingly unstoppable force to a figure of mockery.End your year with one Minneapolitan’s delightful zoning parody: “I Was Radicalized by Minneapolis 2040.”

“As I drove from 50th to Lake Street I was subjected to the type of pure urban obscenity that occurs when single family houses mix with apartment buildings. There were duplexes, triplexes, plexplexes,” writes Kristopher Kapphahn, a Twin Cities biostatistician. “They were all just nestled right in among innocent single-family homes. And it was awful. Anyone who has taken Bryant through South Minneapolis knows what I now newly knew: it’s the very definition of urban hellscape.”